As I’ve previously mentioned, I happen to be the proud owner of some truly stupid novelty slippers, which I couldn’t wear until very recently because they terrified the cat. This sucked, because for 10$ novelty slippers from Target, they’re warm as hell.
Fortunately, as you can see, Peanut Butter decided that they were no longer a threat a few weeks ago, so a few hours after they earned her approval I was finally free to wear them to dinner, as I have nobody to impress and it’s cold as hell. Then, of course, my niece saw them.
Now, my 18 month old niece is REALLY into bears right now. Owls are still cool, of course, but BEARS ARE WHERE IT’S AT. And my slipper paws? In her mind, those are the paws of a mighty bear. It was love at first sight. She giggles at them. She pets them like they’re kittens. She scoots onto the floor to rest her head on them during bedtime stories. She becomes immediately alarmed and indignant when I don’t have them on. Or, you know, if I do have them on, but they’re not in her immediate line of sight. “Ba?” She asks. “BA? BA? BA? BAAA? BA?!!!!!” (She is also very big on repetition.)
It has been like this for several weeks now.
Look, I’m an absolute sucker for this kid, and I will do basically anything on earth to make her happy. I’ve been wearing the bear slippers a lot recently. Like a lot a lot. The novelty of the novelty slippers has worn off over the weeks of having half of the word “bear” cooed/screamed at me on repeat.
So, being a problem-solver, I figured I’d get my niece her own pair of paw slippers, as 1. she’d love them, and incidentally 2. If she transferred her affection I could maybe have a meal without being forced by the toddler on the other side of the table to do this pose on command:
(I mean it’s not exactly that pose, but it’s actually even sexier when I do it.)
Anyway, guess what I can’t find in a toddler size? Fucking novelty paw slippers. Seriously, I have done my research, and I don’t believe they’re being manufactured. Hell, I couldn’t even find a sewing pattern for toddler slippers online that looked anywhere close to paws, which is WILD to me, considering that toddlers are basically the target market for animal dress up.
Well.
That’s not entirely true.
See, I did eventually find a pattern for really, really well designed bear paw slippers. Once I hit on the right search terms, I found a LOT of patterns, actually, and more tutorials for how to make them and modify their size than I ever dared hope for. I took the best of several designs, pieced them together, and I’m presently in the process of making them for my niece. Before I show you guys the final product, I wanted to pause for a moment to recognize the people who made this project possible:
Thank you, furries.
Your ingenuity and DIY ethos is an inspiration to us all, and you are going to make a toddler very happy.
holy SHIT GUYS
FURRIES WORK SO HARD
THIS IS SO HARD
THIS TOOK LIKE 45 hours and it’s just ONE FOOT
okay okay okay okay
so l encountered an issue, but i’m fine.
i’m gonna be fine.
so I finished the paws. I did it, it took so long, I learned so much, I felt really really great about it, and all that effort was worth it when I saw the sheer disbelief and delight that overtook my niece upon first laying eyes on them
“Ba?” she whispered. Then, “BA? BAAAAAA?!!! SSSSS! BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
(she calls me, for reasons best known to her, “Sssss.”)
Anyway, it was exactly the reaction I had been hoping for. It was, very briefly, a perfect resolution to this story.
And then I tried to put them on her feet.
so, to backtrack a little, before embarking on this project I researched a LOT, and I consulted a LOT of different patterns, but the ones I referenced the most were this pattern by Bardic Bestiary and this guide/pattern by @matrices.
I want to be perfectly clear here, not just because Matrices has a tumblr (that is unbelievably full of tutorials and helpful ideas) and therefore might somehow encounter this post, but because both Matrices and the good folks at Bardic Bestiary have honestly made this inscrutable process something that was possible for me, an idiot: What went wrong was not their fault.
So, again, the paws I was trying to make were for a toddler, and toddlers typically lack the requisite resources to purchase and/or create their own fursuits. Given their percentage of the market share, it’s totally reasonable that I wasn’t able to find a pattern specifically for toddlers. But hey, I figured, I’m resourceful, so I just plopped all the pattern pieces into the same Illustrator window, selected the group, and then scaled it all down until the insole pattern piece was 5.25 inches long. Easy.
Everyone with children and/or costuming experience can stop laughing at me right now.
To explain what went wrong, here’s a scientific diagram of a typical adult leg that I made from zooming in on clipart of a soccer player.
And here’s an equally scientific diagram of a toddler’s leg.
In case you can’t see the issue that rapidly became apparent as I tried to shove my niece’s foot into the paws that she now desperately wanted to wear, I will share one further diagram.
Help.
You could cut a line a few inches down the front or side or back, whichever is most appealing to you, open it up at the top to the width you need & then insert a triangle piece into that space. Fur or elastic would work. I’d just like put it in by hand with some back stitching & finish any edges with a whip stitch.
That would give you the room at the top you need. When I have a problem i usually find whip stitching can help. It won’t look as pro as what you already made which is amazing btw, but it would work 🤔
Alternatively you could put a cut on each side & just whip stitch the edges. Then you don’t have to add a panel
I hope the half assed diagram makes sense & helps a bit
Wow, I know I have spent this whole project being very pleasantly surprised at how many people have gone out of their way to share their knowledge and expertise, but I honestly didn’t expect so many people to offer so many genuinely useful ideas. I was incredibly stoked to see @zarnitza‘s suggestions, because I spent about an hour last night glaring at a pile of snaps, buttons, velcro, and zippers, haphazardly trying to figure out what would be the least annoying technique to add some room for toddler chonk while simultaneously being something that would not be a huge pain in the ass to fasten/unfasten from the ankle of an extremely squirmy kid yelling “BA”.
What I eventually arrived at was basically what Zarnitza first proposed, with a slight variation. I was still flying blind at this point, so I decided not to do the same procedure on both paws until I was confident it would work. Here’s the way I approached it, which you can feel free to skip if you just want the payoff at the end:
I took out the liner, then ripped the back seam most of the way down the heel on both the faux fur shell and the liners. Then I traced the openings to make a super sloppy triangle template, went through the usual mess of cutting the fur (HOLY SHIT GUYS, EVEN FOLLOWING EVERY SINGLE BIT OF USEFUL ADVICE ON HERE, FUR IS ANNOYING TO WORK WITH), the much easier task of cutting fleece for the liner, and I sewed both the shell and the liner back up. As promised, this left me with a MUCH wider ankle. Easy to put on… but also easy to fall off/trip over.
So here is where I think I might actually have been clever, I took the fur shell and I stitched in two elastic cords on either side of the triangle piece I’d just added, like this:
Okay, that’s an unintelligible diagram, but you get the point. Elastic bands, sewed in place with enough tension that the slippers would stay on her feet without cutting off her circulation, since that sort of thing is frowned upon. Finally, I put the liner back in, folded it over the shell, and stitched the cuff into place by hand. End result?
I know you guys can’t see this (because I obscured it with a bear emoji) but holy shit… if she was this happy with ONE paw, I can’t wait to see what she thinks about getting to wear TWO of them tomorrow…. which will actually happen, because I just finished the final stitches on the second paw. They’re done.
Thank you so much to everyone who helped me in any way during this long, weird journey I decided to take. I knew that this whole thing was pretty damn wholesome going in, but I honestly didn’t expect that I’d encounter the efforts of so many people who clearly put the time in learning how to make something, and put even more time in to share that knowledge with anyone who wanted to learn how to do it too. I’ve been feeling so bummed about what the past year has suggested about the average person’s willingness to sacrifice in order to help someone else out, and this was kind of a nice reminder that there are plenty of generous, thoughtful, genuinely brilliant people out there who just want to share something they love with the world… and a lot of those people, as it turns out, are furries.
In conclusion, if I encounter anyone talking even the vaguest hint of shit about furries from hereon out, I will go to that person’s house and put a house centipede in their ear while they’re sleeping.
This is officially my final update on the bear slipper saga:
Not to get too emotional here but…
